Dual-CPU Linux Games Console To Ship This Month

The successor to the Linux-based GP32 handheld games console will launch in the UK on 18 May, promising to bring gamers a gadget capable not only of playing native games and well-known titles under emulation, but also movies, music, and picture slideshows. The GP2X contains two 240MHz processors, 64MB of RAM, and 64MB of Flash. It sports a 320 x 240 LCD and is powered by a pair of AA batteries – enough, claimed the console’s UK distributor, for six hours’ gameplay. There’s an SD card slot for expansion, and a USB port for PC connectivity.

The best thing about my old Psion 5 Palmtop was it’s ZX Spectrum emulator. Don’t get me wrong, it was a great little PDA, but having games like Elite and Laser Squad in my pocket was hard to beat. I ended up using it as a portable games console a lot more often than I used it for business.

I’m really tempted by the GP2X, it looks like there’s already been some great software ported to it. Compared with the 18MHz ARM CPU in that Psion the GP2X has amazingly fast hardware, perfect for emulating all kinds of 8 and 16 bit computers and consoles.

The only issue I can see is that a great many computer games require a keyboard. I suppose if you’re patient enough text adventures and some other games might be playable with a virtual keyboard, but that would block a big chunk of the screen, and wouldn’t be much use for action games that require rapid key presses.

Even removing games that require a keyboard, and ignoring the rubbish that made up 95% of just about every old computer/console’s catalogue of games, that still leaves an absolutely huge selection. MAME alone provides access to enough free games for months of entertainment. Then there are classic games like Star Control 2, Ultima 7, Quake, and all the LucasArts adventures you can play with ScummVM.

Personally I’d rather play them than most new games, and that’s a lot of entertainment value for £125 inc VAT.

Yes, it’s great to pirate software and leech off of the work of others, but is there anything on the platform that’s both worthwhile and legal?

Probably very little, cept for some homebrew stuff. But then again, how the hell are you going to leech off people when most of the stuff being emulated isn’t for sell legally anywhere? Don’t get me wrong – I’m not advocating piracy. I wwouldn’t want to see people downloading GBA roms and stuff that is still readily available. But for the rest, emulation is the only way most of these games are going to live on. Very few of the crappy retro packages and TV game packs are emulated, so these technically aren’t even the same games.

I suppose even “abandonware” games from the 1980s are a bit of a grey area legally if you don’t own an original copy. But when they haven’t been sold commercially for a decade or two, I wouldn’t consider it to be morally the same as pirating modern software. If you want to play classic games and remain totally legal then you can always track down original copies on ebay. After all, there’s nothing illegal about the emulators/interpreters that run them.

You might be surprised by how many of the authors of those old games don’t care about their “piracy”, and are just happy to see people still enjoying them. The personal websites of quite a few authors provide their classic games for download. If they don’t see it as leeching/piracy then I don’t either. Considering the continued existence of various archives of software for computers like the ZX Spectrum and Commodore 64, it looks like the companies who still own the copyright aren’t particularly bothered either.

Then there’s all the opensource software that’s been ported to the GP2X, I’m sure even more will appear as its user base grows. Even if you want to avoid the possible legal issues of emulation, overall I think there’s definitely some worthwhile software available.

PSP is about the same price, the question is, what is this console advantages over PSP?

It depends on what you’re looking for. If you want to play an assload of medicore PS2-centric ‘me too’ games, then the PSP is your thing. If you want modern games that are at least somewhat different, go with the DS Lite (out on 6/11/06). If you’re mainly interested in emulation/homebrew and watching movies/videos, you’re better off with the GP2x.

From that, I think I’d better spend $200 for PSP than for a console that can only play Mahjong, Galaga, Tux race, (Quake? can it?) and such.

It emulates pretty much every console up to and including the 16-bit era. It also has a port of MAME (an older version .. supports about 1,300 arcade games). You can copy over and play video files without having to convert them. You can rip DVDs straight to an SD card – none of this UMD crap.

Sure, you can do some of this on the PSP, but then you’ve gotta deal with the headache of the parent company shoving firmware upgrades down your throat and .. personally, I’d rather not jump through those hoops. And yes, it plays Quite, and Duke Nuke’em 3D But hey, it’s not for everyone. Some people would rather play modern games with 6 minute load times, and that’s what the PSP is for

For me open source and emulation games its boring… Who want to pay for that to play old and crappy games?

Of course, you’re right. I’m sure most people would much rather play Madden Part 38, or the WWII FPS flavor of the month.

I would buy this little beast immediately if I could afford it =( I would just love to play something like Doom, Quake, Tetris, Sonic or any Super Mario game. I am just a sucker for such old classics, and they’re great entertainment =)

I’m just wondering about the specs. Why does it have two 240mhz processors and not one 500mhz one? And since it has an USB port, can’t it be used to connect a mini keyboard for games requiring such? I have seen some very compact yet very functional keyboards available, so it wouldn’t much hinder the portability.

Actually, power consumption is linear in clockspeed. A 500 MHz processor should consume about 2x as much power as a 250 MHz processor. However, in reality, you usually have to jack up the voltage a lot to get a 250 MHz processor to clock to 500 MHz, and power consumption is quadratic with voltage.

I would just love to play something like Doom, Quake, Tetris, Sonic or any Super Mario game. I am just a sucker for such old classics, and they’re great entertainment =)

You can play most of this on the DS (including GBA games), $130 for the Lite. And Tetris is even online.

I’m just wondering about the specs. Why does it have two 240mhz processors and not one 500mhz one?

I’m assuming it’s a question of cost.

And since it has an USB port, can’t it be used to connect a mini keyboard for games requiring such? I have seen some very compact yet very functional keyboards available, so it wouldn’t much hinder the portability.

I don’t have one of these myself but AFAIK, the USB is for ‘outbound’ connections only.

The DS is great, and has some great homebrew on it, but realistically most 16/32 bit platforms will never be emulated becuase the DS is not fast enough, or have enough memory. The games will not even fit on the screen. Through in the fact GP2X is Designed with homebrew in mind and you can see why the GP2X has eclipsed other homebrew on handhelds simply becuase it is more suitable to it.

But DS has a much lower resolution screen, it can’t be used for music and videos, and it doesn’t have that much storage space as GP2X..Besides, I don’t wanna play Tetris online, I want to play it wherever I am =)

“I don’t have one of these myself but AFAIK, the USB is for ‘outbound’ connections only.”

Well, atleast the USB port can be used for transferring data to/from GP2X and a PC, so I’d assume it can be used for other things too. And I just noted from their homepage that there reads USB 2.0.

But you must consider that with each few games you pay again the price of the console, while if you get tempted by the “free as speech” side of the Force you have 1000s of games with MAME/MESS.

And most if not all of modern console targeted games are definitely not worty: they lack of fantasy, they copy and steal ideas and atmosphere each others (hum… since someone in the 3ad suggested something about copying and stealing…), producers simply want you to don’t access to old nice games still very playable and amusing (I looked some of the “golden age” collection they sell… that are simply pityful for someone knowing what MAME/MESS can do), and so on.

Producers seems to have agreed (and I wonder what a serious antitrust organism would think about that) to make photocopied games milking the franchising to the bone, selling you 100 times the very same ideas and concepts; the only effort I see is to exploit new graphic eyecandy each time a new generation of console is out, but concepts like originality, playability and so on are lost.

No thanks, I would not pay 10 times the price of the console buying games if that means that I get forced to chose between games lacking originality, playability and replay values, while games I would like to buy are carefully NOT ported by the producers to allow them to sell new, inferior photocopied products meant to diplay the graphic power of the last console!

(and, BTW, I’ll not stop palying games I payed many times the IP value (trough tokens spent in arcade games when I was younger) emulating it on newer hardware giving me the best playing experience I may desire)

(Comment: isn’t this just the revised “MK2” version of the GP2X, which has been out for some time now?)

Anyways, I had been looking around for a small inexpensive device that sports game emulators AND various free (speech/beer) desktop software for some time. Sort of a simple pocket fluxbox box. Instead of a USB stick and a Knoppix/Kanotix disk, a small computer.

At first I looked at the single computer board scence, but I couldn’t find much except gumstix – but why oh why couldn’t they fit a VGA or mini DVI connector on it!? And I wasn’t really sure about the portability here.

Then I had a look at the Nokia 770, but it was a bit too expensive considering the hardware (poor battery time, a bit sluggish, for instance), but at least it had wifi and the debian-style maemo system. Not so sure about gaming though.

Then I found the gp2x. But while retro gaming on this device seems very nice indeed, the device lacks wifi/bluetooth and a way to comfortably input text in a terminal or navigate desktop software. Adding a usb-host nav and a usb or bluetooth keyboard would, if at all feasible, take away much of the portability.

None of these Linux-friendly machines was right for me. Unfortunately. So I actually got a new Palm T/X for about €190, and even though the Palm OS isn’t that exciting, there is plenty of nice GPL apps around for it – emulators, ssh client, http server, vnc, gps, doom etc etc. This is the first time that I have paid of a proprietary OS since Windows 3.1 on my first PC back in 1994, though I hope to be able to run Linux on this device later on.

So, to round off this egocentric post, to me it looks like lots of interesting portable hardware projects supporting free software is popping up every here and there, but there is always some feature missing.

I would not mind paying $30 extra for wifi in the gp2x since it adds SOO much more functionality. How about you? What features would you like to see in the perfect (sort of) all-around gizmo and what would you pay for it?

* Not all gadgets has to be a phone

* VGA/DVI/TV out is nice

* Wifi/bluetooth is nice

* USB host function is nice

* Game emulator friendly button layout is nice

* Line-in audio is nice (sometimes)

* A hidden Qwerty keyboard is nice

* FOSS software

I would go up to €200 for this, never to the €500 levels of a Pocket PC.

“What features would you like to see in the perfect (sort of) all-around gizmo and what would you pay for it?”

I’m quite happy with my Sharp Zaurus SL-5500. It has an SD slot capable of SDIO, a CF slot that accepts WiFi and Bluetooth devices, decent battery life, a 240×320 hi-color display, and best of all it runs Linux right out of the box. There are several different OS images available for it as well. If the Sharp ROM that comes standard doesn’t meet your FOSS needs, there is OpenZaurus, a completely open-source ROM that also happens to have a vastly superior (in my opinion) PIM suite and package manager. The device also has a built-in keyboard.

For gaming, I currently have a native port of Doom installed, as well as two Gameboy emulators and a SNES emulator. MAME is available as well as the previously discussed ZX Spectrum and C64 emulators. Throw in a WiFi card and you have an extremely portable packet sniffer/wardriving machine if you’re into that. I just find it handy that I can check my email and browse the web whenever I go to the mall or downtown Atlanta.

Of course, this device is no longer in production but it can be had on eBay for ~US$150. Throw in a 1gb SD card (US$40) and a CF WiFi card (US$50) and you have what I think is a much better deal than the smallest ultraportable laptop/tablet out there (the OQO at ~US$1999). If you insist on having a brand-new one, http://www.dynamism.com can hook you up with a clamshell version with a 640×480 screen and a built-in microdrive hard disk for around US$899. This is still less than half the cost of the OQO and nearly all the functionality, as long as you don’t need portable Windows XP or 20GB of storage (which I assume most people in this thread don’t, judging by the thread subject).

If state of the art graphics are all you care about then obviously emulating older hardware is not for you. If you care at all about gameplay then there are a huge number of old games that are far from “crappy”.

Visuals aren’t everything, was Tetris a poor game because its graphics mainly consisted of falling 2D blocks? A well designed game that’s fun to play today will still be fun in 10 years time. For example I enjoy playing games like Metal Slug just as much as any recent FPS. When playing on the move on a small screen, less graphically complex games with simpler gameplay can be exactly what I want, especially if it’s just a quick game during a train journey.

When it comes to RPGs and adventures, graphics matter much less than the plot and cleverly designed puzzles. Classic games like Ultima 7 and StarControl 2 still compare very well with the very best RPGs around today. I also greatly enjoyed the old graphic adventures from Siera and LucasArts, and that’s a type of game we don’t see often these days.

As for playing them on a PC, that’s hardly a replacement for a portable console, the portability is the whole point. You might as well dismiss the PSP as pointless because of the existence of the PS2.

I’m in shock and Awe, I’m not sure if you are being clevely sarcastic or not.

Games like Limines, are availble in droves in open source. At least show something from next-gen. That requires the effort of 60+ people working full time, on graphics and code, on state of the art computers.

Classic means “survive the years, remaining popular” I can’t think why that would apply to open source games, as some are still being fondly tweaked and improved after 20 years.

I’d like to see one open-source puzzle game nearly as good as Lumines that isn’t an illegal knock-off of a commercial game.

Agree here .. Lumines is the bomb. But it’s not worth paying the $150+ for a PSP, as there’s not really anything else I want to play on it. Besides, Lumines takes way too long to play and is not really a good fit for a portable device. But, IMHO, it’s the best puzzle game ever made.

I did find one Lumines knock-off for the PC that ain’t half bad, but you need to use your own tunes and skins to make it interesting:

“The problem its that when i move forward i cant go back…Thas was fun, but know its feels boring and stupid.”

I can’t understand this at all.

If a game is fun when it’s released then surely it’ll always be fun? Of course graphics have improved, but I think gameplay is much more important, and that’s something that hasn’t really moved on. A great SNES game from 10 years ago will still be much more fun than a poor XBox360 game released today.

Do you only watch films that are currently showing in the cinema and never watch any older classics?

“Can you play game that looks and sound like this in this console? Can open-source can make this game? No thats my point.”

Open source development is certainly capable of producing high quality games with modern graphics. Have you actually looked at the games currently available for the GP2X? Bear in mind that it’s still early days for this console, I’m sure there are many more games to come.

You can use it as a web server. It comes with PHP and thttpd included. But… it a GAMES console, NOT a PDA. Do you think a DS or a PSP are PDAs too? Do you “hate” it ’cause it has no Nintendo or Sony logo anywhere?

The widescreen I’m behind 100%, that is something I would love to see in a device designed for watching movies as well as gaming. As for the video chip though, there is no way that chip (and yes I know you referenced the laptop version of the chip) would be feasible on 2 AA batteries. It would be better to go the Nintendo DS route, with a low-power-consumption but still 3D-capable separate video processor. As we’ve seen with Mario DS and Metroid Prime, the Nintendo DS can easily handle complex 3D graphics on a low-power platform.

Every time the GP2X is mentioned it doesn’t quite fit someones niche, and for everyone there is an opposing argument.

widescreen – only movies/latest TV and they come in a 4:3 format. 99.5% of programs through open source or emulation will be in 4:3 format.

3D – Is not required by video and 99.% of programs available for the through open source or emulation are 2D or pseudo 2D. It has 2D accelleration.

Wi-fi/bluetooth – Its a 320×240 screen about 3 1/2″ across so internet browsing is tricky, finding another person who owns one will be tricky for network gaming, and killer on battery life, and has USB/SD.

large custom battery – Adds to cost rechargables, cheap; readibly available, pop to the local shop in a pinch, and replacable.

hard drive – sd cheap, common format, 4Gb becoming affordable and 8Gb starting to make appearance, and they are low power easily replaced, futureproofed, oh heard of SDIO.

larger single processer – expensive, dual core becoming the standard not the exception, cheap SOC commodity chip solution allows for use of multitude of free features from video decoding, rescaling, 2D acceleration to less useful ones like alpha-bending and HW/Cursor.

The GP2X doesn’t really have 2 true processors in it. It has one processor it uses to do all the real computations and another one that’s more of a co-processor for media decoding and the like (generalized description of course).

I’ve had a GP2X since early november and truthfully the only thing I’ve really done with it is watch a couple videos on it and wish I had more time to play around with the homebrew for it. I also just tried upgrading to the new 2.0 firmware, but it seems to have messed up during flashing and now it won’t finish booting to the menu. Shouldn’t be an issue for the new models, though, since I’d assume they’re shipping with 2.0 on them already.

Your right its not really two processers. Its 2 CPU sharing the same Memory Controller. It has 4 co-processers named Video Processer; 2D Grahics Accelerator; Video Post Processor; Image & Camera Processor. So Its much more than 2 true processers.

“But you must consider that with each few games you pay again the price of the console, while if you get tempted by the “free as speech” side of the Force you have 1000s of games with MAME/MESS.”

Only if you also happen to own 1000 original arcade machines otherwise you’re just pirating. I’m not saying anyone care and I sure have my fair share of pirated old arcade roms but they are not “free as speech”.

Sounds like a very interesting device. All my friends have PSPs but I don’t like being told how to use my own hardware.

I was wondering, any know if you can add your own codecs to this device? It would be really cool if it played all my MKV files. Now if only it had 20gb HDD and wireless, I’d even pay another $120 for those features.

Since there seem to keep quite a lot of retro gaming fans in this thread, I was wondering could anyone suggest any good old skul RPG games (preferably with emulators). RPG games like Fallout or Dues Ex (the gaming concept I mean), something open ended and not about space.

Sounds ideal for passing the time on trains / planes etc, and means I can take it on holiday with me to play games on the TV when I feel like it.

I can also use it to tinker with – linux offers that benefit over playing the hack-catch-up game with the likes of the PSP homebrew crowd. One of the things I like about my xbox is once its hacked, thats it, just FTP across the latest and greatest.

At £125 its a bargain, especially looking at the community around them. All it needs now is a decent calendaring app and it’ll be perfect for my needs.

They are, until majors are not enough powerful to buy the whole justice system in all countries.

Why should they (the majors) risk to bring real (=of strong law organs, not just of lobbysts) attention on IP matter while they are the first subject to get BIG money from twarted IP interpretation and monopolistic and trust maneuvers, that are fully illegal?

Would they risk to loose the kind of control they have in present days about market and about theyr franchising just to make us pay for some roms abandoned 20 jears ago?

Well, if they want to rediscuss the whole IP matter, they (the majors) have plenty points to explain, and much more than us to risk to loose.

Until then, it’s my right to steal from the big thief, and moreover I’m still awaiting to cash the big fees that many countries, mine included, committed to some of those companies for illegal market operations.

Say the ROMs like a part of the fee they have still to pay and that are still to strike them!

I was just reading a wiki at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GP2X and found out GP2x can actually do quite alot. As of firmware 2.0, that means all the recent versions, support USB keyboards, mice, gamepads, even USB 2.0 hard disks! And if you want, you can stick a USB WLAN card in and have instant wireless access. Now, wasn’t that something people here have been whining about? =)